Peter Saul: from Pop to Politics : George Adams Gallery at CB1-G Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

During January and February the George Adams Gallery, New York will present an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Peter Saul at CB1-G in Los Angeles. The exhibition will feature 20 works made between 1957 and 1967 covering his development as an artist from the late 1950s through his transition from Pop in the early 1960’s to a politically engaged, topical artist whose works tackled the most pressing issues of the day in the later half of the decade.

Having spent most of the early 1960’s working in Paris, Saul claimed to have been largely unaware of the Pop Art movement, unfamiliar with the artists most typically associated with it. But critics reviewing his first exhibitions in New York and Chicago recognized him as a Pop artist though without the cool detachment preferred by most of Pop’s other practitioners. As Ellen Johnson pointed wrote in her 1964 catalogue essay: “Where Lichtenstein appears to be amused and Warhol indifferent, Saul is angry…” And indeed he was – increasingly so.